


‘Round in a Town Where They Don’t Know Your Name

by Marasa



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: Aftermath of the heist, Cuddling, Cute, Feelings Realization, Fluff, M/M, References to Sex, Road Trip, Soft Boys, Vacation, polyamorous kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:07:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23665132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: California turned to Nevada turned to Idaho.They were free birds, and shared trauma was the glue melding their souls together.
Relationships: Mr. Blonde/Mr. Orange (Reservoir Dogs), Mr. Brown/Mr. Orange (Reservoir Dogs), Mr. Brown/Mr. Pink (Reservoir Dogs), Mr. Orange/Mr. White (Reservoir Dogs)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 123





	‘Round in a Town Where They Don’t Know Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> Freddy isn’t a cop. No one’s dead.

Freddy could have never anticipated the inversion of his entire world following the heist but the shot through his stomach had turned something over in him and it had yet to turn back. 

Everything must have gone fully topsy-turvy even outside of himself because shockingly, Joe Cabot had entrusted the jewels to the Dogs’ care with the expectation they would deliver the correct share to each listed, underground contact peppered across the U.S. Any other time and this would have been a job for a singular someone whose sole purpose was that of ‘distributor’ and ‘money collector,’ but Larry, along with all the other Dogs standing in Joe’s office, asked, why not let them do it? No shenanigans, no bullshit, just a much needed break with a harmless side of networking with the jewel trading underbelly.

“Fine, then,” Joe had said. “You can do it while these other guys go home or wherever the fuck they’re going.”

But that wouldn’t do. There was no way this could be a one man job when they were already a monstrous miracle of conjoined entities, one muddled color rather than vibrantly separate. 

Quietly defiant, frighteningly unmovable, they stood strong on the other side of Joe’s desk and awaited further permission lest they allow for this separation that would have them feeling like they were ripping off their own limbs. 

“Don’t you have any jobs to go do?” Joe babbled following his gruff surrender, already trying to backtrack. “Vic—“ he said, and this was allowed now because the job was done and there was nothing to hide, “stay here and get on this other job I got going on. Eddie can get you settled.”

But Vic just shook his head, smiled that James Dean smile and walked backwards out the door after the other Dogs, unashamed and unapologetic of his decision to find his spot in a car stuffed with men and precious gems. 

Orange, White, Brown, Blonde and Pink all piled into the Cadillac DeVille but Blue couldn’t hack it with them. He was much too old, older than Larry even, and he just couldn’t wrap his head around them.

“You’d do me in,” Blue had said. “All of you. You’re a different breed.”

Pink would say later that maybe it was Freddy who had scared the old man away with the whole ‘getting shot’ thing but Larry said simply “Nah. Just… not everyone gets it,” and they didn’t need an explanation because they knew. 

They knew how they were, were learning how they were on this long tour around the United States. Haunted highways and slick leather seats, and Pink was in charge of the music; California turned to Nevada turned to Idaho. 

They were free birds, and shared trauma was the glue melding their souls together.

They were no longer strangers. They definitely weren’t friends.

Friends— that didn’t taste right on Freddy’s tongue. What they were was complicated and not easily definable, a messy entanglement, figuratively for the most part, but then literally as they were prone to sharing some beers and taking advantage of private hotel rooms and some sheepskin. 

Confusing, sure, but pure in its intensity. Freddy had tried working it out in his head or up until he realized just how useless it was to try to work it out. It was natural, Freddy decided. The way he would drape a leg over Larry’s under a restaurant table or give Pink his own nails to bite when Pink became too bored on long drives or how he would find his way into one of their embraces— it was natural.

America became a dreamscape in these days on the road, ever-changing, but these four men with Freddy stayed the same. 

“Blondie,” Freddy said as he shuffled up to Vic in a gas station in Ohio. “I gotta buy some smokes. Spot me.”

Blonde, clutching a bag of salted peanuts, squinted down at him. “Y’know, I expect the same from you the next place we hit.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Vic handed him a hundred dollars pinched between two fingers. “Gimme kiss.”

So Freddy pushed himself up on his toes and pressed a kiss to Vic’s sharp cheekbone. 

There had been a time when Freddy was a real square, a ‘by the books’ sorta guy in love with normalcy. Now it felt right to fuck it all off, hang around some criminals and act differently toward them than how the men they saw at diners and in passing pickup trucks acted with each other.

They hit Detroit. It was cold and the nights were long. The Dogs traded in their wardrobe for long sleeves and dickies and tube socks reaching their mid-calves. 

Freddy and Brown shared a cigarette on the frigid lawn of one of Joe’s safe houses at the edge of town. They were both barefoot and shivery and Pink must have emerged from behind the wind-weathered front door to chide them for that or some other thing. 

They never really got the chance to decipher his yapping because Brown had already swept him up in his endless arms and waltzed him over to the street and spun him under the white wash of the street light. By the end of it, Pink was resting his cheek on Brown’s chest and Brown was smiling widely around his cigarette, smoke indiscernible from the frozen cloud of breath pushing out of his nostrils. 

They sank down to Louisiana, where the air was heavy and the streets told stories. They discovered the pleasure that was drive-thru alcoholic beverages, but Larry held his between his thighs without any intention of taking a sip until they found a place to park. 

They were properly buzzed by nine pm and strayed from their hotel so the warm arms of humidity might hold them once more. In a pack they walked down broken sidewalks shouldering long graveyards. They peered through the iron bars at the cement angel monuments and engraved names they couldn’t read from this shadowy distance.

He could have been there; that was Freddy could think about as he stared intently at the forest of above ground graves. He was conscious of the bandages wrapped tightly around his torso suddenly, but then there was Larry’s strong arm sliding around his shoulders and beckoning him to continue their trek to the end of the sidewalk, of which ended at a church in a sort of plaza space crowded with smiling and laughing people very much alive.

Texas was timeless, a neon Wild West. The motel they found a vacancy at was marked with a flashing, purple sign of a faceless cowboy. The kidney-shaped pool at the center of the complex glowed with a pale pool light that cast a soothing, marble ripple over the exterior of every room.

Inside, the walls were beige-orange and the shower had a tile mosaic depicting a sunset. Brown searched for a movie on the fuzzy television as Vic pulled Freddy’s shirt off and Pink arranged bottles of disinfectant and stacks of gauze on the bedside table beside an ashtray in the shape of the Lone Star state. 

The bullets had been extracted back in California, but now it was time for the stitches to take their leave. Freddy was lying back on the bed, Vic laying on his side beside him and Larry sitting at Freddy’s hip on the edge of the bed as quiet support. 

The snip of scissors through scabby stitches and the cackle of a cartoon cat brandishing a hammer on the television; Freddy winced and Larry stroked his dirty blonde hair from his forehead, sticky with the southern heat. 

He made it out alive, or that’s what Vic said with a kiss to his temple as Larry swept bloody stitches into the waste bin. Freddy’s pulse could be felt in the tender, pink scar tissue, too fresh to yet be numb. 

Larry, Vic and Pink went out for a bite with the promise to bring back burgers and shakes for the two sticking behind. Alone, Freddy and Brown talked comfortably about nothing and rooted around in the bedside table drawers, only to find a King James Bible, of which they read a random page of but failed to find humor in. 

_ ‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things,’  _ and Freddy finished Brown’s cigarette for him. ‘ _ For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. _ ’

Freddy fell asleep in the crook of Brown’s arm, head against his chest and fingers curling in Brown’s happy trail just under his shirt. The television was muted but noise persisted as Brown sleep-talked. 

Mostly incoherent, his speech, but Freddy hummed and responded sparingly when Brown murmured sleepy words pretty as diamonds, proving his contentment for the first time in years.

In the car driving somewhere the next day or maybe the day after, might have been yesterday, Pink slid a CD into the radio and ordered the volume shift from seven to thirteen. Guitar chords spilled from the speakers embedded in the doors, buzzing against Freddy’s calf in the backseat where he was sandwiched between the glass and Pink’s knobby shoulder. 

Freddy couldn’t remember where he had heard this one, but he found that it melted him all the same. Also melting him, the reflection of White and Blonde in the rear view mirror and Pink and Brown in the pulsating shade of the highway colored fleetingly by passing red brake lights.

These men were gemstones. Not diamonds, no, but something else colorful and blinding in their multicolored radiance. 

Scar tissue slowly stitched together under Freddy’s shirt. The road ahead showed no sign of ending. The music continued. 

Freddy’s lips moved in a murmur as he recalled these specific words like a poem inscribed on his heart, and he smiled and his sore stomach quivered and the roadside world blurred indiscriminately, and Freddy sang, “Well I know it sounds strange, but it could be the other way.”

**Author's Note:**

> https://youtu.be/GXu9TYap67I
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr: @marasamoon


End file.
